February 2, 2015 Comments

Monday was a positive day as the S&P 500 rose 1.3% and Toronto rose 1.5%.

It was nice to see Canadian Western Bank rise 7.2%. Other notable gainers included Canadian Tire up 2.4%, Costco up 2.1%, Bank of America up 2.0% and Onex up 2.1%.

Oil has staged a bit of a recovery with West Texas Intermediate being close to $50.

I finished an article that explains the reasons for Warren Buffett’s spectacular success with Berkshire Hathaway over the past 50 years. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger are each set to address this topic in Berkshire’s annual report at the end of this month. Hopefully I covered the main points and included some insights not seen elsewhere. (Tough to do when so much has been written about Buffett and Berkshire) They will also address the next 50 year for Berkshire.

Reports are that Liquidation sales at Target’s Canadian stores could begin as early as Thursday. Target Canada will seek court approval Wednesday to allow a group of liquidation companies to start to sell off the contents of its Canadian stores. Court files specify the liquidation companies are not to advertise the sales as “bankruptcy” or “going out of business” sales.

The last sentence there is quite odd. What, are they afraid of the publicity around the bankruptcy and going out of business sale? (Like, we don’t all already know that is happening?) Or are those terms reserved for cases where it is not really true? (How many times have you seen furniture stores and the like advertise sales that sounded like going out of business sales (liquidation sales) but then they repeated the same thing periodically for years on end? It’s a strange world when the liquidation companies are not to advertise the sales as exactly what they plainly are. In any case, I expect there should be some bargains.